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Schummel admits that he has utterly failed in his effort to characterize the German people in the way Sterne treated the English and French; he confesses that the ninety-page autobiography which precedes the journey itself was intended to be Tristram-like, but openly stigmatizes his own failure as “ill conceived, incoherent and not very well told!” After mentioning some few incidents and passages in this first section which he regards as passable, he boldly condemns the rest as “almost beneath all criticism,” and the same words are used with reference to much that follows, in which he confesses to imitation, bad taste and intolerable indelicacy. He calls his pathetic attempts at whimsical mannerisms (Heideldum, etc.), “kläglich, überaus kläglich,” expresses the opinion that one would not be surprised at the reader who would throw away the whole book at such a passage. The words of the preacher in the two sections where he is allowed to air his opinions still meet with his approval, and the same is true of one or two other sections. In conclusion, he states that the first part contains hardly one hundred good pages, and that the second part is worse than the first, so that he is unwilling to look at it again and seek out its faults. The absence of allusions to Sterne’s writings is marked, except in the critical section at the end, he mentions Sterne but once (p.
At noon our young friends poured forth from the schoolhouse, intent upon having an hour's practice upon the canal. They had skated but a few moments when Carl Schummel said mockingly to Hilda, "There's a pretty pair just coming upon the ice! The little ragpickers! Their skates must have been a present from the king direct." "They are patient creatures," said Hilda gently.
On his way to Leipzig, in the post-chaise, the author falls in with a clergyman: the manner of this meeting is intended to be Sterne-like: Schummel sighs, the companion remarks, “You too are an unhappy one,” and they join hands while the human heart beams in the traveler’s eyes. They weep too at parting. But, apart from these external incidents of their meeting, the matter of their converse is in no way inspired by Sterne. It joins itself with the narrative of the author’s visit to a church in a village by the wayside, and deals in general with the nature of the clergyman’s relation to his people and the general mediocrity and ineptitude of the average homiletical discourse, the failure of clergymen to relate their pulpit utterance to the life of the common Christian, all of which is genuine, sane and original, undoubtedly a real protest on the part of Schummel, the pedagogue, against a prevailing abuse of his time and other times. This section represents unquestionably the earnest convictions of its author, and is written with professional zeal. This division is followed by an evidently purposeful return to Sterne’s eccentricity of manner. The author begins a division of his narrative, “Der zerbrochene Postwagen,” which is probably meant to coincide with the post-chaise accident in Shandy’s travels, writes a few lines in it, then begins the section again, something like the interrupted story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles. Then follows an abrupt discursive study of his aptitudes and proclivities, interspersed with Latin exclamations, interrogation points and dashes. “What a parenthesis is that!” he cries, and a few lines further on, “I
Carl Schummel is next, then Ben, and the youth with the red cap. A tall figure darts from among them. He passes the red cap, he passes Ben, then Carl. Now it is an even race between him and Hans. Madame van Gend catches her breath. It is Peter! He is ahead! Hans shoots past him. Hilda's eyes fill with tears. Peter MUST beat. Annie's eyes flash proudly.
"CARL SCHUMMEL, ONE MILE!" shouts the crier. Soon Madame van Gleck rises again. The falling handkerchief starts the bugle; and the bugle, using its voice as a bow-string, shoots off twenty girls like so many arrows. It is a beautiful sight; but one has not long to look: before we can fairly distinguish them, they are far in the distance. This time they are close upon one another.
He is ahead! Hans shoots past him. Hilda's eyes fill with tears: Peter must beat. Annie's eyes flash proudly. Gretel gazes with clasped hands: four strokes more will take her brother to the columns. He is there! Yes; but so was young Schummel just a second before. At the last instant, Carl, gathering his powers, had whizzed between them, and passed the goal.
On two occasions, indeed, Schummel uses the title of the Mittelstedt rendering as first published, “Versuch über die menschliche Natur.” These facts lead one to believe that Schummel drew his inspiration from the reading of this translation.
"Poor fellow!" mimicked Carl. "One would think he was your brother!" "So he is my brother, and yours too, Carl Schummel, for that matter," answered Peter, looking into Carl's eye. "We cannot say what we might have become under other circumstances. WE have been bolstered up from evil, since the hour we were born.
Hans was delighted with his new skates and, in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they "worked," did many things upon the ice that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal. The two Van Holps and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost.
Yet its dominion was not achieved without some measure of opposition. The sweeping condemnation which the soberer critics heaped upon the incapacities of his imitators has been exemplified in the accounts already given of Schummel, Bock and others. It would be interesting to follow a little more closely this current of antagonism.
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